Issues related to refugees, asylum, and overseas aid.
Churchill Fellow Senthorun Raj has shared a detailed report on asylum and refugee seeking for LGBTI peoples, covering casework, advocacy, and decision-making relating to LGBTIQ asylum claims in the US and UK. Sen’s report doesn’t make extensive reference to intersex, rather, he notes that “despite the increased specialist work being undertaken on sexual and gender…
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Background On 26 March, 2013 in Sapele, Nigeria, Pastor Henry Enuta was physically stripped and humiliated in public because he is an intersex person. Press reports contain sensationalised language, describing him as a hermaphrodite, describing his genitals, and containing mobile phone photographs showing torn clothes, and bare chest. According to news reports, he was almost…
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Advocates for Informed Choice Founder and Executive Director Anne Tamar-Mattis discusses the legal, medical and survival challenges that intersex refugees encounter in their cross-border searches for safe haven.
We continue to be impressed at the consistency with which the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) includes intersex in its work, publications and public statements, since we were asked to comment upon the issue of intersex inclusion several months ago. We encourage other agencies to follow the UNHCR’s example. This latest publication by the UNHCR…
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Our thoughts have recently been on the possible fate of our friends and allies in African nations where homophobic persecution is rife. Intersex people living in countries with homophobic laws and practices face the death penalty simply for being born different. In some African nations intersex newborns are known to be killed as a matter…
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Young women are subjected to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in countries all over the world, whether it is done in secrecy or not. Efforts are underway in some countries to outlaw FGM, but the practice is alive and well in Africa and the Middle East. OII Australia hopes that the young women profiled in the…
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